Town Fever

June 22

"Town fever," also known as "horse and barn disease," is a syndrome in which subjects, sensing that they are close to an outpost of modern Western Civilization, focus on the upcoming interaction with said outpost to the point of obsession. Symptoms include vivid, involuntary mental images of ice cream or kielbasa (in extreme cases, kielbasa sundae visions have been known to occur), 4 am wake up times, and jogging down the trail.

And with 9 days having elapsed since Kennedy Meadows, I had the fever. I had it bad. This was the day I was going to hit Vermillion Valley Resort on Lake Edison. It was time for beer, cheese, meat, and fresh veggies. In addition, I missed my fiancé, Lily had promised to come all the way up from Berkeley to meet me, a drive of several hours.
But I still had to get there. The trail headed up and over Selden Pass. There was some snow, but it was really a total cakewalk;
not so much a pass as the head of a canyon. Up top I was hailed by a beaming grey-haired man -- Hub, I believe his name was -- and it turned out we had an acquaintance in common. We both knew Kevin Hoover, former editor of the Arcata Eye newspaper. The Eye was sort of our competition when I wrote for the North Coast Journal in Arcata, CA, from 2000 to 2002. Such a small world, etc. Hub said Hoover was hiking the PCT, in fact.

Huh. But six degrees of yadda yadda whatever, because: Town.

While hustling down the pass, I saw a couple hikers heading south, so geared up for icey mountaineering that looked like unhorsed knights.

"How's the snow up there?" one asked. 

Surveying the crampons, distress beacons, ice axes, gaiters, the technical t-shirts and shade hats, I promised them they'd have no problem. 

"Did you posthole?" he asked. Postholing occurs when your leg sinks in snow up to the thigh. It happens in soft, afternoon snow, and is pretty annoying, because you have to pull the leg back up using your poles. 

"A bit," I shrugged. 

They gave each other looks that conveyed terror balanced -- barely-- with manly courage. Postholing must have a really bad reputation these days. Maybe they should strap snowshoes onto their pack next time.
As the elevation dropped and the snow abated, the mosquitos came out in force. Now we were getting a taste of real bug country -- swarms that interfered with eating or tying your shoes. I suited up in my dorkiest gear: headnet, button-down shirt with permethrin, rain pants, the works. Then I shed it all again in stages, because who can hike like that all day? 

At the turnoff for the Bear Ridge Trail, which would take me to VVR, I met He-man and Zuke, two brothers from Danville, CA, just out of college. They were really fun to talk to, full of young man energy. We discussed Boy Scouts (a surprisingly frequent topic) and food and that sort of thing. It's like they were the coolest jocks on the football team, I thought. 

We got into a conversation about hiking while listening to audiobooks.

"Whaddya listen to?" He-man asked me.

"A lot of crime fiction, like George Pellacanos," I said. "Or old adventure novels, like the Three Musketeers." I hoped reading Alexandre Dumas didn't make me look too stuffy.

"Cool!" he said enthusiastically.

Zuke chimed in. "I've been listening to 1776, McCullough's contemporary study of that seminal year's import to the Revolution and early American Republic? Well, it's quite... entertaining. But I think it's rather short on substance."

"BRO," He-man responded, "I totally hear you! I myself have been listening to a string of presidential biographies. Yet I find the modern author to be so focused on an appearance of erudition that the work lacks rigor. I mean, great man vs societal trends -- the historiographic debate is cast aside in favor of 'readability.' Feel me, bro?"

As my mom would have said: Never judge a book by the cover.

VVR, to quickly frame this, is a collections of cabins, tent cabins, and tent sites with a store and restaurant attached. It has long had a rep for cheating hikers by padding their bills or selling $20 steak dinners, only to run out of steak halfway through dinner. I had promised myself not to buy a meal there because I resent the place, having personally experienced some pretty suspect behavior in 2008. But it is also a party and nutrition outpost after a long section without, and can be super fun.

When we walked in around 4 pm, there was a huge, drunken singalong in progress around the unlit campfire circle. Someone knew most of the chords and some of the words to all of Abbey Road, and they were determined to use them. It was festive, tipping toward crazed. A young man, very drunk, explained he was a cancer survivor who had just taken up smoking, which no one thought funny. Then someone fell down, which we all found irresistibly hilarious. 

I got a can of Olympia and ordered dinner. So much for my resolve. 

But both dinner and the staff were delightful. 

I had showered and laundered by the time I spied a green Kia Soul coming into the lot.

It was Lily and, to my delight, her mother Marcia. Hugs all around as we gushed to each other -- it had been a beautiful but very crazy drive, they said. My hike was much the same, I said. We checked Marcia into a tent cabin and grilled dinner over an open fire, she recalling her Sierra memories and I wondering if mine would end up seeming as sweet.

The world of light

June 21

The mission this morning was crystal clear: to conquer Muir Pass. Oatmeal, tea, and onto the trail. 

The snow began pretty soon thereafter, but it was blissfully crispy and firm from the cold night. It was easy going; I could skip across the crust rather than wading through the slush. I made good use of the morning hiking hours, feeling strong and nimble. My pack, so punishingly laden with food as I left Kennedy Meadows, was now light enough to lift one-armed. 

It was good that I felt that way, because Muir is a marathon of a pass. It keeps on looking like you might be at the pass, but it's just a ledge, a false pass. That's how the trail ascends: ledge after ledge after ledge. On one of the ledges, I met two college kids, far too clean to be thru-hikers, informed me that it was naked hiking day.

"But you're clothed," I noted dryly. 

They hadn't been prepared for logic. It's, like, my secret weapon.

"We, uh, will hike naked later," the female of the pair explained. "It's because this is the longest day of summer." She paused. "If you don't hike naked, the rangers will give you a ticket," she said triumphantly. 

"It's the solstice? Awesome!" I love the solstice. I love sunlight, light generally really, and this is the day with the most of it. The rest of her pitch wasn't worth the effort to destroy. It isn't that Naked Hiking Day isn't a thing; I have been hearing about since the ancient days of my 1999 AT hike. It's just that... Well... Back in that golden year of hiking, my buddy Caboose participated, only to run into a troop of Girl Scouts. It serves as a parable.  

The light. Today was the perfect day for the solstice, because I was hiking on snow, meaning I got light from above and reflected from below. Muir famously called this the "Range of Light," and on this day, he was unequivocally right. I bathed in it. 

The pass finally tops out in a snowfield (duh) with a cool conically-roofed stone hut. I peeked in and found myself in the midst of the most typical Bay Area conversation possible: rents.

"We paid $2500 for a studio in Bushwick," a woman said. "We're moving to Portland," her husband said. I participated, playing my given role: The greyback hermit.

"We just have a little basement Berkeley apartment, but it's a total steal." 

Somehow this exchange was refreshing.

The fourth person in the hut was a self-described grumpy young man named Burrito. He had spent the night in the hut. "I saw guys walking past here at 11 last night," he said. 

"I think I know who they were," I replied, remembering the badasses. God bless 'em.

On the way down into Evolution Valley I met Shepherd and Danger Noodle. They were cool and fast, and we leapfrogged until dark. The dark was a relief after the light, although the mosquitos were the worst. We slept in a little bowl of sand, along with their buddy Rambler.

Standoff on Mather Pass

June 20

I love mornings on the trail. As hackneyed as it sounds, the world seems fresh in the morning. You're more likely to see a bear, or a big deer, in the early morning. The light is still a little amber, the air still cool.

Until some dude runs you off the trail.

Yeah, it happened again. Some guy roughly pushed past me without so much as saying hello. Again, I got all pissed off. I say hello to everyone I can on trail; I may only see them once, but I want to acknowledge their basic humanity. This dude was hiking like he was the human incarnation of an Audi driver (they themselves being lizards, obvi). He clearly assumed he was faster than me, so would never see me again. But he was wrong. It's the kind of crap that just ruins your day. Again, I determined I would catch up to him, pass him, show him he had a better.

But unlike Mr. Earbuds, this guy was wicked fast. We both passed the other hikers trying for an early morning passage over Mather Pass. At one point, he veered off the trail onto a shorter but steeper cross-country route. I stayed on the trail. We both reached the final switchbacks at about the same time, but the kid just had more wind than me, and he got there first. I scrabbled up right after, panting, sweating, irate.

He was seated in a niche in the rock of the pass, smug. 

"That wasn't so bad," he drawled.

"Pro tip," I huffed, "when you pass people, say hello. You never know when you'll see them again."

His eyes narrowed. He knew I was telling him off, although not necessarily why. In his defense, I had just raced him up a mountain to needle him about his manners; it's not like we really had a blood feud.

Until then, that is. His expression got quite dark. I hiked past him and on. Because screw him and his lack of manners, his sprint to the top, his smugness. Victory goes to not the fast, but to those with stamina. Endurance. Or me, anyway, which was the important thing.

I flew down the pass, executing two glissades. (That's fancy mountaineering French for sliding down snow on your tuchus.) (Tuchus is Yiddish for butt.) At any rate: Not wanting to cede my clear (moral) victory, I raced down below snow line, only to find:

I had lost my rod and reel on one of the glissades (tuchus-slides).

Well, I thought, I totally had that coming. I was all filled with zealous victory, which is usually exactly when I overstep. What exactly had I achieved today? I had been angered, and in response had pissed someone else off and then lost my prized fishing rig. I do not really believe in karma per se; I think the law of averages tends to even stuff out, but not really that divine retribution will cost you a pole.

A couple other hikers, a man and a woman, come down and passed me while I was having this remorse orgy. Had they seen or picked up a pole? They had not.

"I'm carrying some flies, but no pole," the man said.

"Really," I replied, "because I happen to have found a fly rod two days ago and haven't been able to find the owner." True story: I had found an ultralightweight Tenkara rod and had been searching for its owner for days.

I gave him the rod, he was delighted, and I felt much better about my whole day. The Mather Pass Kid and his hiking partner showed up, and when they (quite archly) told me that they had seen my gear but not picked it up, I figured that was okay. Just fishing gear, anyway.

Well, fishing gear and a glove. That glove worried me more, because my hands got pretty cold when I was in the snow. Nothing to do about it now, I thought. 

Or rather, there was one more thing to do: Apologize to the Kid. I had come off as a grade A asshole, I knew. And we probably would be seeing some of each other, as we seemed to share a pace.

I made my mea culpa when I saw him next. He accepted my apology, and we shook on it (hikers shake by touching their closed fists these days because our hands are so gross). And in doing so, I reached a sort of grace for a moment. One that acknowledges the inevitablity of some stress in my life, some rude boys, some young men faster than me. There was a hint of taoism in this relaization; that I had been fighting the universe and should just have accepted it as it was. My reaction was far worse than the original offense. 

I even saw this extend a bit towards my immense sphere of grief over Jennifer's death; I was realizing that her death was tragic but something to accept, to let it come and go as it would, make a ruin of my day when it did, because fighting that grief it only made it worse.

I promise that I won't make this blog about overcoming grief. That book, quite famously, has already been written. But you'll have to bear with me once in a while.

The trail cruised down one creek, then back up the Middle Fork Kings River. As evening fell, I was passed by two guys with tiny packs. Having been in the game for a bit, I recognized them as some true hiking badasses. You can just kind of tell.

"You going up over the pass?" I asked.

"Yes," said the taller one, his wild hair flopping in the breeze, "AND YOU SHOULD CONE WITH US!"

"I dunno," I replied, "pretty late in the day for an attempt at Muir Pass." Muir is the snowiest of the passes by an order of magnitude, and the later in the day it gets, the softer and less easy the snow gets. Until dark, of course, but then you are night ice hiking.

Night ice hiking, it turned out, was exactly their plan. I loved them for it. I loved them for inviting me along. That's how you will know the true elite in this sport, I thought. They're so badass that they are nice. They seemed like Hawkeye and Honeycut from MASH. I learned later that the tall one was John Z, a total badass famous for his CDT video, and his buddy was I think Andrew Bentz, current holder of the fastest known time for hiking the John Muir Trail. 

I hiked until I found a, perhaps the last, shelf of flat unsnowy earth on the ascent. I shared my camp with three gregarious hikers: Fat Kathy, B Squared, and Golden Boy. They made me laugh. Fat Kathy was, sadly, not named after the comic strip. At dark, a troop of ten loud,young hikers came into camp, thought about staying, and then bellowed their way further down the trail.

All in all a good day. 

The PCT and the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle

June 19
Morning came, cold again. No bears in camp, even though I had cooked trout and probably left trout bones and trout stock on the ground. The Bear Menace is much exaggerated, I thought. I hiked down along the last of the three Rae lakes, past Dollar Lake, Arrowhead lake, a trout creek. I only lost an hour to the fish hunt before hiking on into Paradise Valley.
Aptly named. Green, lush hillsides cradled a riparian corridor with stately trees and tumbling, cold snowmelt in the stream at its center. If just two days ago I had been enraptured by the harsh rock and ice world while climbing Whitney, now I was reminded of how much I love valleys, how they rival peaks for the pleasure they bring. True, it can get pretty sweltering, and my Mosquito Entourage is usually there to meet me, but the valleys of the High Sierra seem... habitable. In that, they are comforting. Like if my feet both stopped working and I was stuck there, all I would need would be an axe and some good old-fashioned American can-do spirit, and I could create a homestead.

Which is of course completely absurd. I could not survive a month without fishing out every hole and trapping every squirrel. And even then, I would be some emaciated Atkins refugee looking guy. But it's a fun myth to have coaching your thoughts as they zoom around your head.

The descent ended at a single-track wooden suspension bridge. It swayed disconcertingly/awesomely as I walked over. I am not a huge fan of human intrusion into the natural world, obvi, but a wooden suspension bridge seemed so right, so in keeping with the environs.

Then it was back up to Pinchot pass -- both nothing to sneeze and nothing to write home about. There was snow, pretty abundant, but the route was extremely obvious because of the tracks in the snow.

These tracks finally crystallized something that had been floating around for a while. They were the most obvious demonstration of how are changing the trail just by being on it. As recently as my 2008 hike, this was a map and compass exercise, or even GPS. That meant looking at a map, figuring out which peak in your field of vision corresponded with which peak on the map. It was a different level of awareness about the terrain, one which brought history into the mix by introducing named peaks, valleys, and ranges. That valley is Dead Horse Valley; that mountain is Jenkins Peak.

Now, we just keep or he'd down and follow the path. Don't have to think at all.

I want to super clear about this: I am not blaming anyone. I am more to blame than most, because I keep hiking this trail. What I realized was that by being here to experience the PCT, I was destroying that experience. Crowds scare away wildlife; I was being deprived of seeing bear because of all the noise my fellow hikers make. But I was dong it right back to them. It is true: You cannot observe a phenomenon without altering it.

So we destroyed my 2008 hike experience; so what. The more important question is what has come in its place. I think it is also cool, but perhaps less transformative, less transcendental. And more like a house party. I see these gangs, posses, troops of loud youth banded together. By hiking together, they assure they will see no wildlife and experience no existential fear or vulnerability. But these experiences are the gateways to a better understanding of their, our, vulnerability, mortality, our place in the universe. My understanding of myself is as a small, essentially powerless mote in the nonexistent eye of the universe, and I am content with that. But that understanding, and my acceptance of it, came through my search for ecstatic truth through solitude. 

But you know what else might be going on?I'm probably just getting old. And kids annoy old men.

After Pinchot, I bounced down into a valley and back up again, ending the day in Upper Basin. Wide open meadows with clumps of trees. It was so inviting. I found a suitable copse and set up camp. 

Two passes to glory

June 18

When I wake up in the morning, I usually take a moment to examine the maps for my next 20 or 30 miles to see what delights or terrors wait me. This morning, my map study revealed that I had a choice: I could hike over Forester Pass, the highest point on the PCT, and camp in the valley thereafter. Or I could double up, climbing up to Forester, jolting down to the valley, then regaining almost all that altitude as I climbed up and over Glen Pass.

Wasn't even a choice. I laced up my shoes, ate my grits and coffee, and starred hustling.

Like Whitney, Forester has a glorious approach. You climb up a creek valley and into a steep-sided stone bowl, then climb up the side of that bowl, finally going up a rack of switchbacks to a wee little notch. You can tell where this notch is by looking for the steep snowfield that covers the last switchbacks; this snow always persists pretty late into the season. I focused on the snow and put the pedal to the floor.

If the crowds at Whitney were dispiriting, Forester was the antidote. There were few people, and they were all thoroughly groovy thru-hikers. A young man named Momento snapped my picture as I crossed that snowfield, ice ax in hand like the sensible middle-aged man I am.

Forester Pass, with Momento. You gotta zoom in on these panoramas!

It felt great to be up top. It is not like it's "all downhill from here," not even like the rest of my day was going to be downhill. But for me? I had been unsure my body would let me hike this year. I had been huddled in grief 18 months ago, too weak to walk two blocks for groceries. My friends and loved oness -- Lily, Dan, Kelsey, Ezra, Tim, Shoshana, Tobias and Madeleine -- they had nursed me back. It had taken, as they say, a village. And here I was, a fully realized person again, doing fancy person things. That was my accomplishment.

The trail down took me past the turnoff for Kearsage Pass, which most hikers use as a resupply route. When I passed it, it reshuffled the deck of hikers around me; of course I would see other fast hikers again. I strongly suspected I'd see Hoops, BFG, and CO again. I cannot remember if I've introduced them all... But they were the best company and among the fastest hikers I'd been around. But almost all the other faces were replaced by new ones.

Lots and lots of new ones.

Because the trail was really crowded. By skipping Kearsage, I had jumped ahead a day in the pack, and the afternoon was noticeably denser than the morning. It's not all bad, though; I hiked with a young man named Diesel for an hour or so, and he was great company.

Glen Pass wasn't in any way technical. There was snow, but just the kind that gets your feet wet and slows you down. It was, however, super duper exhausting, a gratuitous ladling of thousands of feet of climb onto an already long day. But I did it, making it over and down to Rae Lakes before dark. 

As soon as the trail hit the shore, I dropped my pack, got out my rod, and cast. I used a Panther Martin spinner bait, and my first cast yielded a 10" rainbow. So did my second. I probably landed 15 fish in 45 minutes, keeping the biggest four to eat. It was the best trout fishing I'd ever had. I made a stringer from a willow branch, collected my fish and looked for a place to cook, eat and sleep.

I found the place at the next lake, a bearbox and campsites. There were some other hikers there, and they watched in bemused interest as I attempted to steam my catch. I put rocks in the bottom of my pot, then some water, then laid the fish on top. It was an improvement over boiling, and I ate well. I still wished for a skillet, though.

The agony and the ecstacy

June 17

I woke as early as I could for the climb up Whitney, although the diminished tent population told me I was still "late" to leave camp at 6 am. The morning was chilly but very crisp and clear; the perfect weather for the gallery of visual delights that awaited me.
First of these was Timberline lake. It's name is obvious and appropriate, as it still held trees along its shores. While cold, the air was also perfectly still, making the lake a mirror to double the majesty around it.

Timberline Lake just after dawn, the valley approach to Whitney behind.

After the lake, the trail climbs up through a rocky valley with sheer walls. Spires dotted these walls, sentinels to my passage. Moonscapes are beautiful. Desolation and cold are the only things a body can expect in terms of creature comforts up here, but the eye and mind remain drawn. It is because we do not belong here, I thought. It is because we love that which is most different from ourselves or our tamed home environs. And this is really admirable in us, in humans. As egotistical as we are, we also revere that which is most hostile to our species.

The valley approach to Whitney

Such happy musings were suddenly and thoroughly tested as the trail, now close to the summit ridge, was joined by the Whitney Portal trail. This trail is the popular route up Whitney. Not only can you use it to do Whitney as a day hike from your car, it is also the first step in the perennially overcrowded John Muir Trail. Suddenly there were hundreds of people, loud and boisterous about their upcoming or just completed "conquest" of Whitney. Hiking up to the summit, I saw a lot of people who were spending their day as actors in their own personal movie about mountaineering: Fully teched out in steel crampons, over-the-calf gaiters, ice axes, and glacier goggles, they seemed to be searching for a perilous glacier to overcome. None obliged them. The trail passed through only a couple of short, scant, nontechnical snowfields. The air rang with the sound of people dulling their crampons on rock. At least their REI dividend will be fat, I thought.
The summit brought new personalities. The guy in full camo with a Rambo knife on his hip. He, appropriately, skulked around furtively and only ever seemed to look at things through the corners of his eyes. But it was in vain; for all his stealth, I could still totally see him. A gaggle of paunched middle-agers high fived and congratulated each other on their time. For them, this was a race course. There's a hut on the summit, and I peaked in to find like 20 people huddled in there, looking shell-shocked and seeking shelter from all the sun and beauty outside.

Muir would be barfing into his beard over this

It was just gross, and such a repudiation of my happy thoughts on the way up. People were not here to revere a hostile world, they were here to conquer it. Or worse: They used it as a backdrop for their own personal ego narrative. 

Yeah, well, no one insisted you be here, Arno. I hustled myself back down the mountain, each step lessening my burden of doubt about the human condition. I guess the most important thing was to glimpse some piece of why I like desolate places. And anyway, there was food to eat, spring water to drink, a clear sky. It was a fine day.

I passed through Crabtree, picking up gear I had stashed there, and hiked down to Wright Creek. In addition to food, water, and sun, there were trout. I whiled away the last of the light catching trout, with great success this time. I caught two big enough to eat, and was therefore presented with the problem of how to cook them. No fires allowed up here, and no skillet... So I boiled them. Not exactly a delicacy, but it was fresh meat. 

First blood

June 16

I was up at 5:30 but still one of the later hikers to leave camp. People wake very early out here, and they seem to attach the same air of luxury to going to bed early as people at home attach to waking up late. Ben Franklin would be delighted.

The trail traversed, climbed, descended, just did its PCT thing. Open forests around sandy tread. I stopped to take off some layers about five miles in, and while I was bent over my pack, a nudge from behind sent me forward onto my hands. It was a hiker who had pushed me out of the trail to get past.

He hadn't said a word. Getting passed on the trail is always a touch fraught for me -- I know I am not the fastest, but I am pretty damn fast, and yeah, I am proud of that. It's like running a marathon; you are not really racing those around you, but it feels much better to be moving up through the pack than it does to be passed, regardless of what your final time is. But you know, getting passed happens. Usually I forget the ego sting before the next podcast comes up on my iPod. 

To be brushed aside, however, felt like a real insult. I was gonna hike that dumbass into the ground. 

I put on my pack, the phrase "suiting up for battle" flashing absurdly on me as I did, and set off at a very brisk clip.

He was easy to catch. Wasn't even hiking that fast. This turned out to present a new problem, though, because the dude was so plugged into his earbuds that he could not hear me ask, then yell, that I wanted to get past. Finally I ran in beside him, waving my poles frantically. 

He let me past. He did, however, do so without trying to lay some blame on me. 

"Next time," he said with a scholarly air, "just tap me on the shoulder." I imagined hauling off and smacking him on the shoulder with my pole. He plugged back in to his buds before I could answer. 

The further away I got, the more peace I found. An hour later I met two hiker dudes by a stream where I stopped for some water. The whole Triple Crown thing came up, and we talked about the CDT for a bit. They were cool. Then Mr. Earbuds showed up and joined them. I suddenly got it: His hiking mania sprang from his need to be with his herd! He was extremely nonplussed to find that his bros had accepted me as cool, and resorted to the primary tactic of most assholes: silent glowering.

Trail drama, who needs it. I moved on. 
After a long ascent, the trail topped out on a high, windy notch with sweeping views east into the dry Owens Valley. There was a tiny little wildfire going on one of the eastern slopes. I knew from other hikers that it had been reported, but there was no attempt underway to stop it. No reason to; the vegetation was so sparse, it seemed unlikely that it would spread. My goodness, O thought, I am seeing an actual healthy wildfire. After all the catastrophic ones, it looked like a wonder of nature.

Then it was down to Rock Creek. From there, I'd climb up to Crabtree Meadows, the base camp for climbing Mt. Whitney (thru-hikers do Whitney as a day hike). But while crossing the creek, I saw the darting shadows of trout, and my hike was delayed while I succumbed to my obsession.

My rubber worms were scoffed at. In fact, all manner of metal and plastic doo-dads were treated with the derision of a picky child surveying a salad of Lima beans and raw kale. So I tried some Powerbait. For the uninitiated, these are little neon green marshmallows that smell like rubber boots and old meat. (Actually, they come in many gross flavors and weird colors; garlic flavor is very popular.) It seemed like an insult to the trouts' dignity to serve them such stuff; they are as beautiful as unicorns, and you would not feed a unicorn a bluerazzleberry corn dog. 

Or maybe one would, as the trout were curious about the surreal pellets. Several ingested the bait, but then spit it out. Finally, over an hour in, one bit and held. I pulled a transcendentally beautiful sliver of fighting muscle out of the creek, held it in my hand, removed the hook and released it.

I had drawn first blood, as Dan and I would say. No matter what else happened, I had not been skunked.

Flush with glorious victory, I strutted up to Crabtree meadow. Watched by a curious doe, I set up my tent, made dinner, and lay down to the sleep of Ceasar, Alexander, and Rollo.

No problem!

June 15
It was a cold, dry landscape. Huge distances revealed themselves, snowy peaks in the distance. The trail took us through green meadows without surface water, but also without anything to distract us from the innate stark beauty. Landscapes like this prompt one to ponder deep, probably fruitless philosophical questions, like: what constitutes beauty? How is beauty related to the hostility or fertility of a landscape? Green fields are beautiful; moonscapes are beautiful. Are we drawn to extremes?

I'll leave it to the philosophy majors, I thought. 

Some things find their greatest beauty in death

The trail took me further and further up as the afternoon got deeper. As it leaked from afternoon into dusk, I approached Cottonwood Pass. In high snow years it can hold snow, making it the first test of what I'd see for the next few hundred miles. There was a wide, verdant meadow before the approach, and I paused to ponder whether I should just stay there. Hoops caught up to me, and I asked her what she planned on doing. We both pretended to consider the meadow, then hiked up to the pass. There's something so addictive about mileage; tacking on an extra three miles is hard to resist.

For some of us, anyway. In one of the switchbacks, I came on an odd couple. A young man with brightly colored glasses -- without lenses -- appeared to be comforting a young woman. On closer inspection, she was the woman who had driven the Ferrari back to Hikertown. 

"We're having a hard time," the young man explained. The woman looked defeated. 

Somehow, this inspired me to give a pep talk. A real classic/clichéd one, like something the Gene Hackman character in Hoosiers might have thought up. Lots of exhortations to never give up, and you've got this, and clapping my hands and saying "you've got this, all right, no problem!" (These are the phrases I use to regulate my own despair.)

I used to wish I could be a professional thru-hiker. Now I wish I could coach.

The pass had no snow, or just a few patches. My Groundhog Day was very auspicious. I tumbled down to Chicken Springs lake, where there were already a dozen tents. I cooked by starlight in the growing freeze of alpine night and tucked myself in bed.

Tiny bubbles

June 14
Lily and I hiked out the next morning in cool, crisp weather. The trail gently rolled its way between boulders and pine trees, me and my ungainly sack-of-potatoes pack rolling along with it. Ten days of food. Lily bade me farewell after a few miles, leaving me to contemplate the mountain range in front of me. I hoped there was still snow, because it is beautiful, but also knew full well that I's be cursing it if I ended up in it. The notion of the mountains' enormity was exciting, even as I hiked through another burn, this one I had actually seen on fire when I walked through in 2008. 

About five miles in, I stopped for some water at a spring that was being taken over for a campsite by a gang of Catholic seminarians from Indiana. Also present were one exceedingly harried horse packer and Sugar. He scrutinized me, smiles, and adressed me as "Crown." That's what I get for being such  a showboat with my T-Bomb.

The trail snook up over a little ridge and down into enormous Monache Meadows. These are a sagebrush sea, miles across, with little islands of trees on elevated pieces of land. They inspire awe and disquiet in me: there's something about their open emptiness that reminds me of salt flats or playas, something forbidding about their scale.

Tucked in along one shore of this sea is the Kern River, here just a creek, which the trail crosses by a handsome bridge. I love this spot, as hundreds of swallows nest underneath  the bridge, careening around you as you stand there. I am not alone in this love, as dozens of hikers were there, basking in the sun or yelling at one another. Someone had bathed using soap in the creek, a total pet peeve of mine. Bubbles collected in the eddies and clung to grassy shore. Putting soap into water you know others have to drink seems like the height of mannerlessness. Maybe they assume that it cannot matter, because the river can just flush it away. But there are now too many of us for that to work.

There were also other things in that creek, things that were caught and held my eye: trout. I tried for about an hour but without luck. Or that much skill, really. My angling was cut short by a naked long haired man in the water a bit downstream from me. He rose out in a big move of beard, hair, and 20-something hubris, pausing to glance at his girl on the bank to gauge efficacy. It looked like an overwrought scene from a PBS special about early man. The fish and I both left in disgust.

On my way out of the meadow, I saw Coppertone hiking south along the PCT. Remember him? He gave me a root beer float at Walker Pass. Anyway, he seemed to be in great spirits. He was also definitely very naked. One must assume the two are linked. Also, his name made a lot more sense now.

The air got a distinct alpine evening chill to it as I hiked up along Cow Creek, topping out at a spring. The cold forced me into the tent and bag as soon as the sun finally set.